Local News

Assistant U.S. Education Secretary tours Morgan Community College

ByJENNI GRUBBS Times Staff Writer

Posted:
09/01/2012 09:15:43 AM MDT

From left, Morgan Community College President Dr. Kerry Hart, Health Occupations Director Kathy Frisbie and U.S. Department of Education Assistant Secretary Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier tour the new Ambulance Garage, which is also a classroom for students in the Emergency Medical Services program at MCC.

Assistant U.S. Education Secretary Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier visited Fort Morgan on Monday, as part of a tour of northeast Colorado to learn more rural education.

Morgan Community College was one of the stops on her tour, and she spent time seeing the college's facilities and speaking with department heads, teachers, students and representatives from local businesses, like Cargill Meat Solutions.

"I'm here because I wanted to come out and hear from rural community colleges," she said.

The point was to gain feedback on the U.S. Department of Education's policies and programs, including a new blueprint to reform vocational and technical higher education.

"This visit is really focused on the rural communities," said Dann-Messier, who heads the Office of Vocational and Adult Education at USDE.

Morgan Community College Health Occupations Director Kathy Frisbie, left, and Assistant U.S. Education Secretary Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier right have fun while discussing the manikins used in the nurse aid skills lab.

"What challenges are you facing? What can we do to help you overcome them?"

She said the goal was to ensure policies weren't being developed "absent of the local voice."

"We had a lively exchange of ideas" and discussed the new proposals and how they "will be challenging to implement," but also why it was important to do so, she said.

The blueprint includes seeking to reform the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, which is a primary source of federal funding for secondary and post-secondary career and technical education programs, such as many of those at MCC.

Under the new blueprint, there would be a greater focus on partnerships between educational institutions and businesses and on training workers for the needs of the business community.

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Before the stop in Fort Morgan, she visited Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, and the tour later moved on to Greeley and Fort Collins that same day.

Traveling with Dann-Messier were Margaret Kirkpatrick, Colorado Department of Education state adult education and family literacy program director, and Scott Stump, dean of career and technical education for the Colorado Community College System.

Among them, they were looking learn more about the successes a school like MCC was having and what led to them, as well as hurdles that had to be overcome.

Morgan Community College hosts a roundtable discussion focused on Career and Technical Education (CTE) partnerships led by Dr. Brenda Dann-Messier, assistant U.S. education secretary. Participants from MCC were: College President Dr. Kerry Hart, Vice President of Instruction Betty McKie, Vice President of Administration and Finance Susan Clough, Vice President of Student Success Kent Bauer, Director of Health Occupations Kathy Frisbie, Director of Adult Basic Education/GED Julie Waters, Workplace Education Coordinator Shirley Penn, Physical Therapy Assistant Faculty Doug Smith and students Marc Quinones and Nicole Garrison. Community participants were: Cargill Assistant Vice President and General Manager Nicole Johnson-Hoffman, Brush School District Superintendent Michelle Johnstone and Scott Stump from the Colorado Community College System Office, who coordinated the visit.

Dann-Messier said she learned a lot on her MCC visit and had a chance to visit with a wide variety of people.

"Folks were really candid, open and honest," she said. "What I came away most impressed with was the focus on quality."

She said that focus starts at the top with the college president and then trickles down to the faculty and students, and MCC seemed to be doing well with that.

Dann-Messier said she also was impressed with how responsive MCC was to the needs of the local business community, including training employees for Cargill, schools and health care businesses.

"I think the folks in this community should be awfully proud of the programs and adult education opportunities here," she said.

She said she liked hearing about how Cargill focuses on community development and making sure their employees had the opportunity to learn skills to move up in the company if they chose.

"That's very impressive," Dann-Messier said. "They feel like an educated employee is going to vote, going to give back to the community."

Also, focuses on relationships mattering was something she said she would take away from the visit.

MCC's training programs for medical professionals were another thing she pointed out as important for the local community -- and the nation, as a whole.

She said MCC was "very responsive to the need for nurses and medical workers. You were going to make sure there were enough employees to provide."

Dann-Messier also praised the concurrent-enrollment programs MCC provides for local high school students.

"You're doing a good job here," she said. "The students (in concurrent enrollment) really feel like they have a real leg up. In Colorado there is a very successful model."